August 17, 2012, by Lindsay Brooke

YouTube experiment to celebrate scientific hero

One of the fathers of modern chemistry and a band of award winning scientists from The University of Nottingham will come together on Monday 20 August for a YouTube experiment which will see 24 chemistry videos loaded onto the social media site over as many hours.

The award winning Periodic Table of Videos website, presented by a cast of University of Nottingham scientists, is the brainchild of film maker in residence Brady Haran. The 19^th century Swedish chemist, Jons Jacob Berzelius, determined the exact elementary constituents of large numbers of compounds. He worked out the modern technique of chemical formula notation. And in 1811 he introduced the now familiar classical system of chemical symbols.

On Monday, to mark the anniversary of his birth and highlight the crucial role Berzelius played in modern chemistry, the Periodicvideos team are staging a Berzelius Day. The project is likely to be their biggest challenge yet!

www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/2012/august/youtube-experiment-for-scientific-hero.aspx

The image of Jons Jacob Berzelius has been supplied courtesy of ©The Royal Society.

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